Lord Flipper writes: "I'm in the process of building sites for a couple of small businesses. Both are using PayPal's Website Payments Standard for the transactions. After looking at numerous OpenSource and "paid" versions of Cart-based stores, it seems they're all determined to emulate butt-ugly eBay-like interfaces. The available (free, or otherwise) 'skins' or 'themes' are simply "putting lipstick on a pig" by employing beginner-level CSS.

My first question is: What have other developers used, or done, when faced with similar choices? And, secondly, how can I, as a third-party to the "banking" details (passwords, product IDs, etc), test whatever I end up with without forcing my clients to divulge info that they'd be crazy to share?"